


red, green, gold

by cm (mumblemutter)



Category: Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Body Horror, Incest, M/M, Serial Killer in Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 06:36:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblemutter/pseuds/cm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki draws: severed heads, mutilated torsos, a mouth wide open in a scream. Bodies strewn about, arms and legs akimbo, drenched liberally in blood. All the victims look like Thor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	red, green, gold

"But if not you, someone else," Loki says.

"No," Thor says. " I won't allow it. I won't let you."

 

-

 

The first time Loki tried to kill him, Thor was sixteen. He woke up near dawn and there was a knife pressed to his throat, and Loki smiled as he straddled him, said, "You're so beautiful, Thor. Your blood is as well, I'll bet."

"Get off me, Loki," Thor said then. He shoved Loki off him, but grabbed his wrist first so he wouldn't hurt himself with the knife.

Loki landed with a huff on the floor, and opened his hand. The knife hit Thor's bare chest, nicked him with a razor sharp edge. Thor let Loki's wrist go and picked up the knife, tucked it under his pillow. "Go back to sleep, Loki, I have practice tomorrow."

He closed his eyes on Loki's small, scrunched up face, scowling at Thor through his mess of hair.

The cut didn't leave a scar, just a scab that healed soon enough to reveal new, pink flesh. As if Loki had never even been there.

+

Loki watched him, all the time. "Your brother's weird, Thor," all his friends said.

"No - he's just different," Thor replied, and after enough glaring they just shut up and let Thor be. It was none of their business anyway: he was Thor's brother, Thor's responsibility. No-one else's.

When they were young Loki used to follow him around like a spider monkey, skittering across the floors on all fours, only to turn tail and run away if Thor glanced back. Mom said, "He's just going through a phase."

A creepy, skulking phase that Thor didn't think he'd ever grow out of, but he wasn't the adult so he just kept quiet.

+

The second time Loki tried to kill him they were in college. Loki had miraculously graduated two years early, got a perfect SAT score. His IQ was off the scale, everyone knew that.

But they chose the school because of football, because Loki needed Thor around to function, to keep him from spiraling off the edge.

Thor dreamt he was drowning, and when he woke up Loki had tied a rope around his neck, and was squeezing, the edges of the rope wrapped around both his wrists. Thor couldn't breathe, couldn't move, and after a while his vision went black. The pressure lessened abruptly, and he heaved in great gulps of air, choking back tears.

"Your tears are beautiful as well," Loki said, and he sounded awed.

Thor knew he was considered handsome, knew he was loved, if mostly for his skill on the field. It was what it was, and he couldn't change it, just like Loki probably couldn't change who he was either.

Every single one of Thor's girlfriends, from the time they started to date, remarked about how different they both were. "Like night and day, or the moon and the sun."

"The darkness only has meaning because there's light," Loki said once, because he was always spying on Thor.

Thor didn't understand what he meant, not back then.

+

He met a girl in college. Astrophysics, genius, dark haired and so tiny Thor could probably pick her up single-handed.

Loki hated her.

He told Thor, "She's beneath you."

"How?" Loki shrugged, because with Loki if he said it he believed it, and it was not up to him to prove that he was right, it was up to Thor to realize it as well. "She's the one," Thor said, and watched as Loki's eyes darkened.

There was an accident in the lab, an explosion caused by some faulty valves. Jane managed to escape with a few cuts and bruises, but they kept her overnight in the hospital for observation. She looked so tiny in that bed, surrounded by machines. So fragile and easy to kill.

Thor thought of Loki, skittering around like a little spider monkey.

She cried when he broke up with her, kept asking him why. "It's not you, Jane. It's me," Thor said, and meant it.

He probably did love her. She probably was the one.

Thor went on a week long bender, woke up in a jail cell with a broken rib and a busted nose. The university covered it up because he was willing to play through the pain, and because Dad donated enough money for them to build an entire new astronomy lab. Thor didn't remember most of it, but apparently he'd caused thousands of dollars of property damage and punched the dean in the face.

"He deserved it," Loki said. He took Thor's hand in between both of his, kissed each knuckle in turn. Thor lifted his other hand, brushed Loki's bangs out of his face.

His brother was handsome. Pale and sharp featured, with the biggest green eyes.

Why had Thor never noticed before? Was it because no-one else did? Because Loki hid behind baggy clothes and a mop of hair and this air of oddness that he wore like camouflage.

"Are you crazy," Thor asked, and it was a rhetorical question, but it also wasn't.

"Less than you might think, but more than most." Loki's pretty mouth twisted up into a small smile. "Now you're getting it, big bro."

"Am I?"

"Yup."

+

They started fucking when Dad told Thor over spring break to leave the country, go explore somewhere, and Thor decided against everyone's advice that Loki would come along with him.

Everyone except for Mom: she worried for Thor, but she worried for Loki more. It was just the way it was, and he knew she loved him as well, just not as deeply, not quite the same.

Loki decided they'd take a roadtrip around Europe, but they somehow ended up in Iceland, driving around endlessly with no purpose that Thor could discern. Loki had a map, and he drew on it in red marker pen, told Thor to go here, and here next, and after that there. Glaciers, black sand, waterfalls and fishing villages. Thor allowed Loki to choose the music, but he mostly just left it at a low volume so that he could listen to Loki talk.

"Do you remember being born," Loki asked. It was late, and Thor was barely paying attention to the road, hoping that Loki hadn't gotten them lost and they would reach the inn they were expected at soon.

"Of course not," Thor said, and squinted. The snow made the world too bright, and with the absolute silence outside it was as if they were the only two people left alive in the world.

"I do. I remember floating peacefully, and then one day my solitude was shattered by the world, and it was the worst experience of my life. But then we came home, and they let you hold me for a moment, and I felt safe."

"Don't be stupid - you can't remember that."

"I remember," Loki replied, with quiet conviction. "I think of your insides sometimes, you know. How warm and slippery they must be, how safe."

The car hit an ice patch as Thor turned to Loki to tell him to shut up, and he couldn't control the wheel. They spun off the road and onto the ice, came to a juddering stop right next to a heavy metal post. Thor stared at the pole for a while, unseeing, and then he started to laugh.

Loki laughed too, said, "That was close. Shit, that was close."

"Yeah," Thor replied, and put his shaking hands to his face. "Fuck."

"Thor," Loki said, and there was a shift in his voice, the one that always spelt trouble.

"What," Thor asked, wary.

"We're alone," Loki replied. "Truly alone."

Thor lowered his hands. It struck him then, that Loki could kill him here and no one would ever know, no one would be able to prove anything. Loki was a consummate liar when he wasn't busy being a freak, he would get away with it, easy.

But all Loki did, as Thor was calculating his odds, was rise from the seat and climb into Thor's lap in one smooth motion, grind his hips against Thor's. "You're so cold," Loki cooed, his hands on Thor's cheeks. "We should keep each other warm."

That was how it started, but sometimes Thor thought it started much earlier than that.

Sometimes Thor thought it started the night he woke up with Loki's weight on top of him and a knife to his throat. Sometimes Thor thought it started even earlier than that. The night Mom came home from the hospital maybe, told a two year old Thor, "This is your brother."

And possibly Thor, used to being given things, had assumed that this was another gift. That Loki was his.

But mostly Thor didn't think about how it started, just that it was.

+

The third time Loki tried to kill him it was poison. Coffee, given in a cup that read "World's Best Dad" in red, raised ceramic.

Thor woke up vomiting, feverish, with Loki sitting on the floor, an expression of clinical interest on his face. "What did you do," Thor asked, and heaved yet again. "Call an ambulance. Loki, for fuck's sake I don't want to die."

It wasn't fatal, the dose, as Loki calmly explained to him when the worst had passed. "It was a delicate process, measuring out the exact amount that would still keep you alive but have an effect on you."

He clapped his hands together in glee, and Thor almost punched him then, almost lost it because it hurt so much, but he managed to control himself.

Punched the wall next to the bed instead, broke three fingers.

"You have to understand," Loki continued, and his eyes were wide, earnest. "You're my brother. I would never harm you - not really."

"Okay," Thor said, and believed him.

 

-

 

"Are you going to stop me, then," Loki asks, and he raises an eyebrow.

"Yes," Thor says, even though he knows he doesn't mean it. "Maybe."


End file.
